Black Elk (Hehaka Sapa) (c. December 1863 – August 17 or August 19, 1950 (sources differ)) was a famous Wichasha Wakan (Medicine Man or Holy Man) of the Oglala Lakota (Sioux). He participated at about the age of twelve in the Battle of Little Big Horn of 1876, and was wounded in the massacre that occurred at Wounded Knee in 1890.

Portrait of Black Elk

Black Elk was born into a volatile, trying time in Lakota history. Their older way of life was coming increasingly under fire by outsiders as white settlers and traders pressed relentlessly westward, invading the Lakotas' homeland. Some of their older practices and ways of thinking and speaking about the world changed or fell into disuse for a number of reasons: diseases taking their toll on the older population; confinement to reservations; boarding schools; and the imposition of foreign religious beliefs, economic, social, and political systems, and the English language. That so many of the older customs and beliefs survive and are practiced and remembered today--sometimes adapted and revitalized for the challenges of a new century testifies to the durability and vitality of Lakota culture.

Black Elk married his first wife, Katie War Bonnett, in 1892. She became a Catholic, and all three of their children were baptized as Catholic. After her death in 1903, he too became baptized, taking the name Nicholas Black Elk, and continued to serve as a spiritual leader among his people, seeing no contradiction in embracing what he found valid in both his tribal traditions concerning Wakan Tanka, and those of Christianity. He remarried in 1905 to Anna Brings White, a widow with two daughters. She bore him three more children, and remained his wife until she died in 1941.

Towards the end of his life, he revealed the story of his life, and a number of sacred Sioux rituals to John Neihardt and Joseph Epes Brown for publication, and his accounts have won wide interest and acclaim. He also claimed to have had several visions in which he met the spirit that guided the universe.

Source

Black Elk Speaks - Edited by John G. Neihardt (1932)

In the Sacred Pipe - Edited by Joseph E. Brown (1953)